THE FUTURE

Gravity’s Arrow is set thousands of years in the future. Humankind (referred to from now on as ‘Earthmen’) managed to escape earth before it was too late, and colonised local stars, but the process was slow, with ship crews spending many years in space before reaching their destinations, lightyears away.

Initial contact was made with some alien species, which had also reached the stars, but the great distances involved meant that communication and trade was limited.

The Galaxy

Out of this arose the Empire of the Ancients, the Poshokans, a society formed of all starfaring species, that dominated the galaxy for millennia, until the Great Dying, during which all Poshokan controlled planets were wiped clean of life. The remaining civilisations expanded into the power and territory vacuum and vied with one another for control.

The events of this story are set approximately two thousand years after the Great Dying.

Crystals - summary

The earthmen discovered the crystals by chance. Though never fully understood, their properties soon were harnessed, and allowed faster-than-light travel, by way of instant teleportation. They could also had other uses, such as in weapons, and as chargeable sources of light. However, they interfered with electronic equipment, so that while travel across the stars became far simpler, this had to be done WITHOUT computers/electronic devices, forcing people to rely on simpler, older technologies to survive and navigate their way, day to day.

Electronics and computers were still used, though, in havens (sometimes called ‘shrouded havens’) far from any crystals, so that the aura of crystals could not damage them. Such havens could be used to build precision instruments and space-worthy ships of high quality. They could also be used to genetically engineer creatures, such as giant transport creatures like the transants and woada, but also weaponised beasts such as dragons. These could then be raised and deployed on worlds where crystals were in use. Automatic weapons that were not reliant on electricity, could also be used day-to-day on the inhabited worlds.

Use of crystals led to a rapid expansion of all starfaring species across the galaxy, the expansion of borders, trade, conflict, and war.

Scientific theory behind Crystals

The universe of Gravity’s Arrow is our universe, but after the discovery of the crystals the trajectory of society, towards one filled with artificial intelligence, with or without the coexistence of organic life, was altered. Crystals, being essential for faster than light travel, while interfering with electronics, prevented artificial intelligence, robots, and even electronic devices, from working among us. Organic life, capable of crossing the stars, and destroying artificial intelligence using crystals, remained dominant.

Humans (earthen/earthmen/earthwomen), discovered the crystals as they journeyed across the stars at the dawn of space travel for our species. Noted, initially, for their strange inertial properties, the extensive study demonstrated that different crystals exhibited various properties, including illumination, projection of destructive energy, and interference with electronics. These findings hinted at a new universal theory of everything.

However, as the energies used and complexity of the investigations increased, the interference with electronic equipment became not just a problem for the machines observing the tests, but also for essential electronic devices nearby. After an experiment in a desert caused a distant city to lose all power, all research into crystals was moved to dedicated laboratories on asteroids, or uninhabited planets that were in the process of being terraformed.

Investigation continued and, after many decades, teleportation of a crystal was achieved, as was the ability of crystals to manipulate the forces of gravity to a limited extent. Combined with the observation that crystals took both time and energy to charge up, prior to performing their designated action, and because the energy output at the time of activation often exceeded the energy delivered to a crystal during its ‘charging’ process, the following theories were reached to explain their relationship with the universe.

Crystal interaction with wormholes

Crystals are thought to interact with wormholes: infinite Planck scale connections between all parts of the universe. Upon activation most crystals use energy to open these wormholes and extract energy from nearby space.

To activate, a crystal must first be primed. Priming of a crystal requires it be loaded with energy – achievable by exposing it to appropriate wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation and other sources of energy. However, due to the complex nature of a functional crystal’s internal structure, the energy must be stored in an ordered phase, a process which takes time to achieve. Therefore, even at a starport, where crystals can access vast amounts of a star’s energy from a port panel, charging of crystals still takes time; usually at least six hours depending on the quality of the crystal.

Teleportation-crystals

Teleportation-crystals (referred to as ‘navigation-crystals’ in the book) have the ability open and then travel through a wormhole. The travelling process is instantaneous. Opening a wormhole in this fashion has particular energy demands. Research implied that wormholes exhibit a property, referred to as wormhole resonance. The resonance of a wormhole varies according to the wormhole’s length across space, the gravitational forces exerted across it, and interference from other wormholes and crystals. The resonance of a wormhole also determines the amount of energy a crystal requires to open it. The practical implications are that travelling greater distances, or against gravity requires greater energy, limiting the distance a crystal can teleport. Added to this that crystals capable of teleporting are rare, and those capable expanding larger wormholes are rarer still, and that passenger teleportation-crystals dissipate their energy without activation during teleportation, travel across large distances must be broken up into smaller jumps. This way crystals can be recharged and the journey continued. A teleportation-crystal that opens a wormhole retains unused energy and can, therefore, be activated again in order to perform a further jump, unlike a charged teleportation-crystal that happens to be within a teleporting ship – the charged but unused teleportation-crystal will lose its energy, wear out faster, and may even be destroyed in the process.

The teleportation-crystals are connected by cables, made of special, crystal material, to smaller crystals on the outside of a vessel. The three dimensional space that can pass through a wormhole is defined by the locations of the small crystals on the vessel. Typically these are projected from the vessel by rods or spikes that retract inside a vessel during atmospheric entry.

Among those speakers of interspecies galactic that live on planets, teleportation-crystals are typically called navigation-crystals.

Havens and electronics

Far from where crystals are used day to day, havens exist where electronic devices are put to use. Artificial intelligence, friendly and subservient to organic life, is integrated into havens. In havens precision weapons and space-worthy ships can be produced before being delivered to the people living among the crystals. Creatures can be genetically engineered on havens, and then born and bred on planets where crystals are commonplace.

The planet dwellers do not understand what happens on havens, and most of them know little of electronics. Those that know anything of these matters consider the feats achievable with electronic equipment, and artificial intelligence, magical. To them (and they make up the vast majority of the inhabitants of the galaxy) those who dwell in havens are sorcerers. They might speculate, as characters in this novel do, about the primary source DNA (or other genetic coding material) required to engineer a particular creature, and refer to that DNA as the essence from which the genetically altered creature was engineered.

Other crystal types used frequently include gravity-crystals, which can create a gravitational field to improve the functionality of people aboard spaceships. Lumia-crystals provide illumination and blaster-crystals produce bursts of destructive energy. However, crystals do decay after being activated many times. Blaster-crystals in particular are prone to breaking down when used too frequently or without sufficient rest.

Aura

By interfering with wormholes, crystal activity affects the resonance of wormholes nearby. Because of this, if a ship wished to teleport into an area where crystals were active, the wormholes that extended close to the area of crystal activity would be unusable because of their altered resonance states. Therefore, when navigating towards a destination where crystals are in use, a navigation/teleportation-crystal will only have available to it wormholes that go as far as, but not into or beyond, the region of space affected by crystal activity. For practical purposes this zone of crystal influence is considered to be the aura of a crystal, and navigators know they can only travel up to, but not into or through the aura of a centre where crystals are in use.

This issue would prevent ships from teleporting from within a crystal-aura. However, teleportation-crystals (navigation-crystals) can, somehow, read the aura, and predict when wormholes, heading to their intended destination, will become available. They then use that moment to open the target wormhole and teleport. They are unable, though, to read a distant aura such as one at their destination.

Electronics and crystals

It is believed that the use of wormholes to draw in energy causes unstable charges to appear and disappear within space near to an activated crystal. It is assumed that this activity is what destroys or at least prevents electronic devices from working.